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Rarely the object of anything other than derision, three-wheelers are pariahs among motor cars, mocked for their ungainliness and national health service styling. Yet the machine credited with being the world's first motorcar, Karl Benz's motorwagen of 1885, was a three-wheeler, and only three-wheelers have even been land-speed record holders. But for most of us, Del Boy's desperate Reliant Regal in 'Only Fools and Horses' is the dismal epitome of this strange mode of transport. In fact, hundreds of three-wheelers have been developed over the past 120 years, no less than 508 of them recorded on the wonderfully obscure 3wheelers.com website. Here you can discover the Crouch, the Budweiser, the Dolphin and the Frisky, and if you persist with the site's almost irresistible A-Z Tour, the Gnat, the Landshark, and the hopeless Snuggy too. And yes, some of the more infamous three-wheelers are there - the AC Invacar, outlawed in the UK as of this week, the trendy '70s Bond Bug, Reliant's Regal, Robin and Rialto and Sir Clive Sinclair's insane C5. Some of the machines in here make the Austin Allegro look as glamorous as a Ferrari. So take a look - you'll see ugliness, and hopelessness, redefined.
3wheelers.com
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